Why, of course. But the Tory philosophy makes it a damn sight more "finite" than it ought to be. Instead of properly funding the health service, training our own doctors and nurses, giving adequate funding to the education system, sorting out the crisis in the care of the elderly and disabled, making sure that our bins are emptied every week, that our streets are kept clean and our potholes filled, and making sure we have enough policemen, we'd rather give the money needed for those things to wealthy shareholders (who make money sitting on their fat arses - talk about a benefits lifestyle - where have I heard THAT before!), or to billionaires who put all their money into tax-free overseas havens, or to non-doms, or to multinational corporations who demand low corporation tax under threat of moving out (in other words, holding the country to ransom - where have I heard THAT before!)
If economics is all about money and nothing else, Iains and Tory-style, then I don't want to know. I want the government to work for the people, not look after one class of spivs and to hell with all the non-Tory-voting rest.
John Seymour, he of all those self-sufficiency books, a bit of a right-winger who had little time for the welfare state, wrote a great little book called Bring Me My Bow in which he decried the Tory-style ideology of economics for the entrepreneurial few (that is, the ripoff merchants), as well as the economy of scale. He had the gall to try to include human happiness in economics. How dare he, Iains! A damn good read.
And Iains. Where's our ?350 million per week for the NHS?